Food For the Poor

Reports from the weather station on the top of the building display on an electronic board outside the chemistry lab. It is 2° outside with a wind chill of -16. The rooms are warm; the heat being turned on in all wings as of our return from Thanksgiving break.

Today is the pick-up for the annual Christmas food drive for the poor. Each homeroom is assigned a family to provide for. The families are referred to the school by a local charity, “Respond Now”. The family my homeroom has been assigned has a mother, 8 and 9 year old girls, a 17 year old girl, and a 9 month old baby. My wife pointed out that the baby probably belongs to the 17 year old; something that, while probably true, I would not have figured out myself.

My homeroom is cooperating well with the project—mostly because I offered 5 points extra credit for donating $10 to buy food and gifts, and bringing in some cans of food. This is an AP Chemistry class who are so conscious of grades that they would crawl naked over broken glass for 2 points. I did not have the same cooperation last year when my homeroom was a regular chemistry class. The average students cannot be bribed by extra credit to cooperate with any project—they don’t care that much about grades.

I have heard that a substantial number of teachers in the building were having significant problems getting the students to do anything. In the past the teachers would spend their own money to provide for the families; fearing the embarrassment that would come from having nothing on pick-up day. I was one of these, but have decided not to do the work myself anymore. At the beginning of the drive I decided that I would not shop for food, gifts, or donate my own money.

All of my 27 students donated $10 and all but 4 brought in food items from home. If they had done nothing I would have made them bring the empty boxes down to the collection and experience the embarrassment of their lack of concern and effort first hand.

Three of them volunteered to shop for the gifts. I gave them $20 for each family member from the money I had collected, some suggestions for what to purchase, and sent them off to shop. Each did an exemplary job, even adding money of their own if they thought something extra was needed. Two girls volunteered to do the food shopping, one picked up non-perishable items Tuesday after school, and another bought perishables last evening. I checked in at the drop off point this morning at 7:10 and she had already turned her items in. We have 4 boxes of gifts and 11 boxes of food—plus the perishables being stored in the cafeteria until the family gets here. An alumnus donated turkeys for all the families, as he has done for the past 25 years. These families are destitute and don’t qualify for public aid until the beginning of the year. These donations are everything they will have for the 2-3 weeks around Christmas.

Our students, with a few exceptions, are relatively well-to-do, making their callous indifference all the more disturbing. My friend in the Theology Department spoke to me about one young man who, when asked why he had not donated any money, said that he needed it to buy a video game. When she tried to shame him by asking whether the video game was more important than food for a desperately poor family on Christmas he replied, “I really need that game.” For those who think that this indifference to the needy is a recent phenomenon, I can tell you that it has always been this way. The only thing new now is the inability of the teachers to afford to cover for them. At dinner last night my daughter told me it was just as bad when she was in high school almost 10 years ago. She helped organize her homeroom’s food drive and explained to me that the more money the student had, the more cheap and uncaring they were. It is my hope that there is an especially unpleasant place in hell for these, mean, ungrateful children.